『알히잠』에 나타난 사우디아라비아 사회의 전통과 근대성

Abstract

The article explores the conflict between tradition and modernity which Saudi Arabian society witnessed in the era of 1950s and 1960s, with special reference to Saudi Arabian poet and journalist Aḥmad Abū Dahmān’s autobiographical novel al-Ḥizām. The author describes vividly a southern village’s living conditions, customs and manners through village strongman Ḥizām and his fellow tribesmen. The village begins to face a storm of change with the opening of a modern school and a clinic. The residents do not accept willingly, but are compelled to seek compromise to the new realty. As for Ḥizām, he struggles to defend the tribal tradition against the government’s attempt to modernize the country. The author comprehends the tradition and modernity through plain contrasts; village vs. government, tribe vs. individual, old vs. new, dirty vs. clean, oppression vs. equality and superstition vs. rationality. The characteristics of Saudi’s modernization consist in that its motivation began from outside; from the West and the city, not Saudi Arabia nor the village itself. The West, however, does not obviously appear in al-Ḥizām. This is due to the limited time coverage of the novel that stopped when the author was still young, or the government imposed modernization through non-Westerners. Whatever the reason may be, Saudi’s modernization was not spontaneous, but a foreign process, and the West must have been lurking behind the scenes. The village people met modernized non-Saudi Muslims from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Pakistan. It seems that the author accepted modern values and lives now outside the country, but he maintains his love for the traditional values. His respect to Ḥizām who loved him and tried to defend the village is clearly revealed in the novel al-Ḥizām which was named after him.